Five Town Communities That Care and I have collaborated on a column to address the news concerning the presumed death of missing Glenburn teenager, Nichole Cable, and information on what parents and teachers can do concerning youth online safety.

Recently, police announced that a 20-year-old Orono man is facing a murder charge in connection with the disappearance of Nichole Cable of Glenburn. Earlier news reports mentioned that a fake Facebook account, or what is known as an  “imposter profile,” was used to lure the 15-year-old away from her home.

Understandably, situations like these heighten parents’ fears about their children’s safety online. Here are some suggestions on how to broach this topic with your own children.

An imposter profile is when someone creates a fake website or social networking profile in order to deceive a target.  In these cases, the predator stealse the identity of someone the target may have known in real life, and communicates with them through this imposter Facebook profile.

What we know is that predators often “groom” young boys and girls online by befriending them and finding out what they like, what hurts them and what makes them tick in a short amount of time. It’s incredibly easy to find a wealth of information on a teen simply by requesting to be their friend on Facebook. Once the teen accepts the friendship request, the predator looks at what kind of media/music/movies the teen likes, what drives his or her personality and what “angles” they can use to manipulate the impression of having common interests. For example, the predator sees what bands the teen likes on his or her Facebook page and stores that as nuggets of conversational “bread crumbs” by casually mentioning: “Oh you like One Direction? I like One Direction too!” From there, the common interests quickly lead to personal revelations and “heart-to-heart” talks. Pretty soon, the teen feels like he or she has someone special who deeply understands them and might be the only one who knows what they are going through.

What parents/teachers can do.

As upsetting as this situation is, current news stories need to be used with your teenagers as a talking point. Here is an excellent list of tips in how to guide this conversation:

• Meeting People Online: Dos and Don’ts of Online Relationships for Teens

The number one rule I tell teens is “Don’t friend anyone on social media that you don’t already know in real life and trust 100 percent.”

Everything you upload for content can be used against you, whether to groom you for nefarious purposes or for use in cyberbullying situations. Content is often repurposed for malicious reasons.

So many teens shrug off this advice thinking, “Oh, she’s being alarmist. It’ll never happen to me.”

It happens every day around the country, and in Maine, and these stories need to be told.

The other suggestion I‘ve repeatedly made to parents is to implement aBeanStalk's uKnowKids app on your teen’s cell phone, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts.  This column explains how to use this free “parental intelligence system” so that it instantly alerts you via text or email if any keywords your teen and someone else uses with them contains language around cyberbullying, sexting and predatory grooming. You’ll also know exactly whom your teen has ecently accepted as a friend on social media without compromising his/her online privacy.

If you'd like to know more about how to protect your kids from an imposter profile, along with other safety tactics, join my free webinar June 13 at 5 p.m. There are currently eight spaces left for Identifying & Preventing The Six Most Common Cyberbullying Tactics.

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Kay Stephens is the co-author of Cyberslammed: Understand, Prevent, Combat and Transform the Most Common Cyberbullying Tactics, sponsored by Time Warner Cable. She has been making presentations at Maine schools on specific cyberbullying threats, such as imposter profiles and how to understand, prevent, combat and transform them. To see more posts on this topic, visit Kay Stephens at her Affiliate page on Penobscot Bay Pilot.

Five Town Communities That Care is dedicated to promoting healthy youth development and to the prevention of problem adolescent behaviors, including substance abuse, violence, delinquency, school dropout, teenage pregnancy and suicide.